Hay Fever
by penna.nomen
Summary: Jason has hay fever, and Michael convinces Janet to concoct a cure. The side effects are unexpected. Inspired by S4E11, where Jason refers to reading Romeo and Juliet. Features a soliloquy from Macbeth, updated to be about a koala.


"Tahani, this is your soulmate." Michael nodded toward Jason, who was sniffing one of the many bouquets in Tahani's mansion.

_Achoo! _

Tahani's attempt to greet her soulmate was interrupted by two more sneezes from Jason. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

"Hay fever," Michael said. "For some reason, that wasn't in his file." It was a surprise, and Michael didn't care for surprises, not on the first day of his grand "Good Place" experiment.

"I'm surprised allergies exist in the Good Place," Tahani said as Jason sneezed again.

"They aren't supposed to." With a wave of Michael's hand, the allergy was cured. "That should be the end of it. Speak up if there's a recurrence." He grinned at Jason. "Although of course you don't speak, not with your vow of silence."

He repeated the cure in the first reboot, and the second. After that, Michael added _remove Jason's allergies_ to the reboot parameters, so it happened automatically.

It wasn't until Michael saved Jason's life in Jacksonville that he realized why Jason's allergies weren't in the file. His neighborhood was entirely paved over, with no flowers for miles, so it wasn't an issue when he was alive.

That is, it wasn't an issue until Jason reunited with Team Cockroach in Australia. The campus had extensive gardens, and suddenly Jason was sneezing constantly. Michael watched as the other humans offered him various medications. With Janet's help, Michael kept track of which ones worked fastest, which lasted longest, and which were most effective.

Perhaps the most frustrating part about being marooned on Earth without his powers was that Michael couldn't cure Jason's allergies. The sneezing was annoying, and now that Michael was reformed, he felt a little sorry for Jason and for everyone Jason sneezed on.

"Janet, could we develop a cure for hay fever?"

#

"Hey, Jason!"

Jason turned around and saw bow-tie-dude waving from a doorway. After wandering around the university hallways for the last hour looking for the way out, he was happy to see a familiar face. "Hey, homie! What are you doing here?"

"How would you like to join a medical trial?"

"I've been in lots of trials," Jason said. "I'm usually on the defense. Could I be on the offense this time?" His hero Blake Bortles played offense for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Jason wasn't sure who the quarterback was in court. Maybe the judge?

Bow-tie-dude patted Jason's shoulder. "Not that kind of trial, buddy. Janet and I have been working on a cure for hay fever. We'll give you a drug we've developed and see if it works."

"Oh, yeah! I've tried lots of drugs. Sometimes doctors pay me to take stuff, and sometimes Pillboi steals stuff, and sometimes —"

"Yes, that's fine. I already know your drug history," bow-tie-dude interrupted. "This way." He led Jason to a room where a chalkboard was filled with weird symbols and long words. Or long symbols and weird words.

"Oh, hi!" Jason said to Janet. "I didn't know you were a doctor."

"Although I know more than most human doctors, I don't have a degree. I'm just playing a doctor." She rolled up his sleeve and gave him a shot and held his hand and talked to him, and it was nice.

"I didn't know this is what playing doctor meant," Jason told her.

Bow-tie-dude said, "Shall we see if your hay fever is gone?"

"We're good. I don't have a fever. No hey, fever. Only bye, fever."

The bow-tie-dude shook his head. "That's not what hay fever means. Just hold on." He walked to a closet and returned with a bunch of flowers covered with plastic. He pulled the plastic away. "If you're cured, you can smell these without sneezing."

Jason took a deep breath. Then he felt dizzy. "Oh. Hey, fever."

#

"Uh-oh," said Janet after Jason passed out.

"What went wrong?" Michael asked, as he helped lug Jason from the floor onto a chair.

"I need to make some adjustments."

#

Jason woke up and looked around the room. "Get me a Molotov cocktail!"

"No, Jason, you were just having a dream." Bow-tie-dude was sitting next to him. "There was an issue with the hay fever drug, but we've fixed it now. Janet, will you do the honors?"

"Yes, I'm ready." She gave Jason another shot and rubbed his arm until it stopped hurting. Then she held the flowers in front of his face. "How do you feel?"

Jason squinted as things started looking foggy. He thought he saw something familiar floating in front of him, and he reached out to touch it. It slipped through his grasp. "Is this is a koala which I see before me, the soft ears toward my hand? Come, let me pet thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, cuddly vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a koala of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the hay-fevered brain?"

#

"He's quoting Shakespeare?" Michael shook his head as Jason continued talking to an imaginary koala in a version of a soliloquy from _Macbeth_. "Elizabethan English and iambic pentameter. How did that happen?"

"I need to make a few more adjustments to deal with the side effects," Janet explained. "Nearly there."

"No rush," Michael said. "I want to see how he'll interpret the final battle scene." He found a bag of popcorn and sat down to watch the show. Sometimes he recited the lines of other characters when Jason moved beyond the soliloquy to give him something to react to. "You know, he's really good," Michael said in an aside to Janet. "I like his re-imagining of Lady Macbeth as a fire-breathing dragon who's tired of living in a world ruled by humans."

#

Jason blinked. He was standing in the middle of the room, and couldn't quite remember how he'd gotten there. "Where'd the dragon go?"

"We turned her into this," bow-tie-dude said. "Here," he handed Jason a red flower.

"How do you feel?" Janet asked.

"I've taken a lot of drugs, and that was the fifth-weirdest trip ever. It was in the sweet spot, psychedelic without being too scary. You nailed it!"

"Just smell the rose," bow-tie-dude insisted.

Jason sniffed. "Nice."

"You're not sneezing!" Janet said. She sounded happy.

"Yeah. So about those drugs. Can I take some with me? You know, so I can see the dragon again and make sure she's okay?"

"No," she said. "That version was a mistake. We can't distribute those."

"You're sitting on a gold mine here!" Jason objected. "I can hook you up with some guys back in Jacksonville, and you'll be rich. If you play your cards right, you could have your own jet ski."

"No," Janet repeated.

"Are you sure?" bow-tie-dude said. "Think what it could mean to ingenues with stage fright."

"Yeah. Think of the engines!" Jason agreed.

"And I, for one, want to see Jason's take on other plays. _Hamlet. The Importance of Being Earnest. Phantom of the Opera_. _West Side Story_. Just consider the possibilities, Janet."

Janet shook her head. "I am, Michael. Imagine _Cats_ as told and performed by someone on those drugs."

"Oh, yeah!" Jason agreed. "Me and my sixty-person dance crew would make awesome cats."

Michael took a sharp breath. "We must destroy any remnants of that drug, and the formula, for the good of humanity."

It was disappointing that they didn't want to share the drugs, but these were Jason's friends and they needed help. "I'm good at destroying things. This sounds like a job for a Molotov cocktail," Jason suggested.

Michael nodded. "Yes, bud, that's what I'm thinking, too."

_A/N: I have not seen the new Cats movie, but I've enjoyed reading descriptions from movie-goers. I like to imagine it as something Jason dreamed up while on mind-altering drugs. _


End file.
